


The Passing

by SassyDragon



Series: Just Us Again Down Here [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: 2nd-person POV but NOT a reader insert!!!, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Implied/Referenced Suicide, The Empress and the Queen series by Omoni, because it's definitely not, but also didn't want to say No Archive Warnings Apply like this is a completely innocent story, but didn't think it was quite serious enough, reader is multiple characters, the six souls, would have put warnings for both Underage and Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 11:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10570161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SassyDragon/pseuds/SassyDragon
Summary: Eight kids, eight sets of circumstances, eight paths that all led to the same place. Eight lives nearly ended.Legend says that those who climb the mountain never return.Bonus backstory for The Seven, which is based on the lovely Omoni's work, but can be read as a stand-alone.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Omoni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omoni/gifts).



For a moment, you think it worked. You think that you are dead, or dying, and soon your soul will be free of this cruel, horrific world forever, until you realize that your ankle feels like it's on fire, which means that you still have ankles, which means you are still in your body, despite a fifty- or sixty-foot fall. Shit.

You try to push yourself upright and immediately regret it. Something is fucked up in your right elbow; it feels shaky and strange, and putting weight on it makes it hurt worse than getting a day-old bruise punched. And any movement at all makes your ankle _throb._ It's definitely broken. Shit.

Somehow, you manage to sit up; rubbing a sizable egg on your forehead, you look around, wondering why the hell you aren't dead. You should be dead. You just climbed a haunted mountain and went in this weird temple-like thing and threw yourself into a huge-ass hole with every intention of dying, and yet you aren't dead. It makes no sense.

Your surroundings are everything you expected - sheer rock walls dripping with moisture, sunlight from the opening far, far above, a little mound of dirt with some sickly-looking grass that apparently broke your fall - and also what you did not: a doorway flanked by two columns, with the same symbol carved over it that was carved over the entrance up above. The door looks old, very old, but not so worn as its surface counterpart.

Slowly, almost intimately, the dread settles in again. By now you know it like an old friend, one who is never welcome but always tolerated simply because it cannot be gotten rid of. You would know. You've tried, many times, but always it slinks back, sneaking dark tarry tendrils past every wall you erect against it. _You are not enough,_ it whispers, in that raspy voice your mother uses when she's too stoned to even shout at you. _You were never enough. You think yourself strong? You think yourself powerful? You think yourself determined? You are nothing, Chara. You are nothing._

It's almost right, but not quite. If it were completely right, you'd be a spirit, or less. You wouldn't be sitting here on your ass at the bottom of a hole, wondering what the fuck is going to happen now.

You intend to shout, to call whatever ghosts or monsters or shit might be here to come and make it quick, just kill you already, but what actually comes out is "Mommy! Daddy! Somebody help!" Where the fuck did _that_ come from?! You don't want help, especially not from your shit-eating parents. You don't want to sit here, hurting, for the rest of your short miserable life. You try again. Again you hear yourself cry, "Somebody help..."

But nobody comes. But nobody comes. But nobody--

Footsteps on stone. Soft, hesitant. Like a scared child.

There's someone in the doorway. It's a little boy, and he looks like nothing you've ever seen: nose like a goat, floppy ears and sharp teeth like a dog, eyes like a human. White fur all over, fingertips ending in short, blunt claws. Green and yellow striped shirt.

"Uh...are you okay?"

\---

You're starting to have a bad feeling about this. The woods are just woods, nothing really odd about them, and yet...something's not quite right. You can't shake the sense that this might not have been the best idea.

But a dare is a dare, and besides, Tyler said he'd let you have a ride on his new twenty-one-speed with the flames painted on it if you did it. They're just stories, anyway. There are no monsters. It's all silly stuff someone made up long ago to scare people. And you don't get scared.

All you have to do is get halfway up the mountain, take a picture of the sunset with Jamie's disposable camera, and get back down again. Easy, right?

Maybe not. You’re kinda small, even for your age, which means you’re two years younger and a foot shorter than Tyler. He could probably laugh you off even if you go through with the dare, but if he does, you’ll be ready for him. You’ve been watching boxing videos, practicing on your pillows and stuffed animals. That’s not to say it’ll be easy, though. The climb is certainly taxing enough on your short legs.

There's this weird opening in the mountain just ahead. It looks almost like a stone archway, carved columns and everything. Surely it wouldn't hurt to just take a peek inside? The sun won't set for an hour, by your estimation. You've got plenty of time to find someplace open enough for a good photo. 

...It is just a little creepy, though. You stick the camera in the pocket of your shorts and pull on your boxing gloves, not that they'd do much good against anything, but it makes you feel better. Then you step through the archway.

It's dim, but not completely black. Light filters through the door. The place is overgrown with vines and stuff, like some ancient temple out of Indiana Jones. And in the middle of the floor...well, there doesn't seem to _be_ a middle of the floor. It's just this huge gaping hole.

This definitely wasn't the best idea, you think. You ought to just leave, find an outcropping or try and make it to treeline to take that darn photo. But you don't get scared, ever, so to prove it to yourself you take a couple steps closer to the edge, just close enough to peer into the hole. It looks like it goes down a long way.

Afterward, you think there's a lot you should have done. You should have watched where you were putting your feet. You shouldn't have gone any nearer to that hole. You shouldn't have gone in the temple-thing in the first place.

But as it happens, as you feel your foot catch on a root and the world tilt until you should land on the ground except there isn't a ground to land on, only empty space, as with a terrifying lurch your stomach parts company with the rest of you, as you fall down, down, down...all you can think of is that yeah, you might be a little scared after all.

\---

Despite evidence to the contrary, you actually think a lot. Sure, you have an unfortunate tendency to pick fights on very little provocation, you're as stubborn as an old mule, and the stereotypical cowboys - your idols, essentially - were the "shoot first, ask questions later" type, but you can get surprisingly philosophical when it suits you.

Falling down some enormous hole in the side of Mt. Ebott, watching your life flash before your eyes and wondering what the devil's gonna happen now, definitely qualifies.

You're always asking the reasons for things; now is no different. Why did you climb the mountain? Why did you go in that old ruin? Why did you fall? The first answer is obvious: yes, it's weird for a fifteen-year-old to be playing cops and robbers, but that never stopped you, and you're absolutely certain Lauren's awful little brother Tommy ran up the mountain, and you take your job as a cop, the (imaginary) long arm of the law, very seriously. 

...Okay, mostly certain. Eighty percent. Seventy-five. At least, you think that's where Tommy went when he jumped the fence in the park. Maybe. Is all this just wishful thinking? You’ll be really disappointed in yourself if it is- assuming, of course, that you manage to get out of this alive.

The second question is a little thornier. You're not stupid. You should know better than to go in old caves with old columns outside when you never know what could be in them. So why did you do it? You're not sure. Maybe you're taking - were taking - the game too seriously. Tommy isn't really a robber, but he did call Lauren's kitten boring just because he prefers curling up in her lap and purring to clawing up the furniture. Up until the moment when you felt a root snag your foot and you went down, bringing the little galoot to (imaginary) justice seemed like the most important thing in the world.

And that might be why you fell. You were distracted. You were getting carried away. Your reasons were...less than perfect. You never really believed in karma or divine retribution or anything like that, but now? You're not sure of that either.

So why are you here? How could you have made such a lapse in judgment? Why is it you that’s falling at all, and not some other kid?

The bottom of the hole is not so far off now. There's a pile of what looks like yellow flowers- that might break your fall, though chances are you are about to die. That's such a scary thought that you reach for your toy pistol, the one you got two Christmases ago that's only supposed to shoot the foam balls that came with it but that also fits lemon drops for some reason. You actually get it half out of the holster before you realize it will do no good, that chances are you are about to die whether it's in your hand or not.

And then you slam into the flowers, and your head slams into the hard, hard ground, and you wonder no more.

\---

There had better be some wild mint in here. Otherwise you will have gotten yourself thoroughly creeped out for nothing.

In recent weeks, since Papa got sick and you've had to handle the cooking because you're pretty sure Dad could burn a salad if he put his mind to it, you've gone looking for herbs in all the public forests within biking distance. It's half culinary project, half excuse to go for a walk in the woods alone and try to come to terms with the fact that Papa may never wake up.

...Well, almost all the public forests. Mt. Ebott - or, as many call it, simply "the mountain" - is the only one you haven't tried yet, and there hasn't been wild mint anywhere else, and there's no mint at the supermarket and mint would be just what you need to make tonight's casserole extra special. Which is how you came to this weird ruin, little more than a cave in the side of the mountain with a couple columns outside and some old cracked flagstones within.

And an enormous, gaping hole in the center of the floor.

You consider setting down your frying pan and getting down on your hands and knees to look, but decide against it. You're not sure why you brought the pan, really. It's not like there are monsters here, or anything else you'd need to defend yourself from. If Papa wakes up and discovers you've taken it out of the house…

 _When_ Papa wakes up, you remind yourself, and squint over at the far side of the hole, looking for some sprig of toothed leaves among all the grass and vines. You go as close to the hole as you dare. You think you see something, but it might just be a wild strawberry or Virginia creeper; you take another tiny step forward- 

-And feel your foot snag a vine, the weight of the frying pan dragging you into the abyss.

You scream the whole way down, so loudly that when you finally hit the flower-covered ground, there's hardly any wind left for the impact to knock out of you. It steals what little it can, though, leaving you gasping for breath, every inhale so exquisitely painful that you're certain you've at least cracked a rib, if not broken several. The scent of crushed flowers fills your nostrils. The petals add their yellow pigment to your already-stained apron.

The frying pan is still in your hand. You use it as leverage to push yourself into a sitting position. Your gaze follows the walls up, up, all the way up to where the hole looks no larger than the sun in the sky.

Will you ever see the sun again?

"Well, one thing's for certain," you moan into the empty silence. "I'm not gonna be home for dinner tonight."

\---

There are two kinds of hide-and-seek.

Actually, there are two kinds of most words. There’s cheating, like when Josh tries to make Tessa who can’t quite read yet think a jack is a queen in Go Fish, and then there’s _cheating,_ like what Mama yelled at Papa after the short-skirt lady came over again and Mama got home before she left. There’s hitting, like hitting a baseball or hitting your elbow on the side of the chair by accident, and then there’s _hitting,_ like what Papa does to you and Mama whenever he’s had too much of the funny-bottle stuff. Mama calls the funny-bottle stuff “happy juice,” but you don’t really like that name. It doesn’t make anybody happy at all.

This is _hide-and-seek,_ not just hide-and-seek. If it were just hide-and-seek, you’d never have gone up the mountain. Hide-and-seek you play with the other kids, like Josh and Hannah and the twins Skylar and Sophie; they’re easy to hide from, if you know where to go and how to stay really really quiet. _Hide-and-seek_ you play with your parents. You’re never It, you never know how long you have to hide, and the hiding place has to be really good because if one of them finds you, it hurts. 

Usually when you’re playing _hide-and-seek,_ you can’t get out of the house because the screen door to the backyard squeaks. But they were yelling too loudly this time, and you hadn’t found a place to hide yet, so you slipped out as quietly as you could. It worked, they didn’t see you, and now you’re walking up the mountain, because your hiding place has to be extra good. You think Papa might have seen you leave, and if he did, and he catches you now...it’s the kind of thing Mama says you shouldn’t think about because you’re too young.

You’re scared. You hug yourself tightly as you walk on, further, higher, away from town, away from Papa. It’s getting past dusk toward actual night; you can hardly see the path anymore. Every rustle in the trees could be a monster, because everyone says not to go up the mountain because there are monsters and they hate humans and no one who goes up ever comes back down, but nothing jumps out at you. Yet.

You’re really scared. But every time you consider turning back, you remember Papa, and keep going. You won’t lose this game of _hide-and-seek,_ even if you have to stay out all night to do it. You know how to watch, and wait, and keep going even if it looks like you’re going nowhere, because you’ve come this far and there has to be something good eventually. There has to.

You touch the old ribbon in your hair, your favorite one. It’s comforting just to know it’s there, that even if you aren’t home there’s a little bit of home with you.

You see a looming shape in the darkness and panic for a moment, freezing up because what if there really are monsters and there’s more people playing _hide-and-seek_ than just Mama and Papa, but it’s just a cave with a couple columns outside. Maybe a person lives here? You hesitate to go in, since it’s completely dark and you won’t be able to see anything, not even the moon through the trees, but even if it’s empty it’ll be a good hiding place. 

You dart inside and to the left, backing up until you find a wall and sliding down it so you’re sitting on the ground, which is covered in plants you can’t see. The plastic dagger you were using to play pirates with Josh and Sophie earlier is poky in your pocket. After a moment of rest - climbing mountains is tough for little kids, you’re a little out of breath - you stand up and feel your way further into the cave. It’s slow going, but you don’t mind going slow. 

And then one foot hits something, and the other foot hits nothing, and you fall, and fall, and fall.

\---

A clearing. Just one clearing. Is that too much to ask?

To be honest, you’re really fed up with your life right now. It’s just like stupid scatterbrained Madame to surprise you with a lead in the big spring performance, then give all the after-hours practice rooms to the older kids. Like you have the space in your family’s tiny, cluttered high-rise apartment to practice ballet! Not to mention, you haven’t told your mom about the lead. This, naturally, makes you feel awful about lying to her, but you don’t want to spoil the surprise. So where the H-E-double-toothpicks are you going to run through the dance before Thursday, when it has to be _magnifique_ or Madame will pick someone else to dance the lead?

For some reason, the mountain seems like the best bet, legends of monsters notwithstanding. So up you go, feeling even more awful because your dad told you never to climb up here. But then again, when you asked him why not, did he believe the legends, he said no, of course he didn’t, but wouldn’t offer any other explanation. BS, you say. You hate it when people lie. Without the legends, Mt. Ebott would be just like any other mountain, no less safe to climb than Fox Mountain a few miles to the south and east. He believes it.

Do you?

No, you don’t, you tell yourself. It’s all silly anyway. Even if there were monsters way back when, and that’s a big _if,_ they’re probably all dead now. And they can’t have been the way the tales say they were, made mostly of magic. Stories about magic are nice and all, but come _on._ There’s no way that bit of it could be real.

...But you hate it when people lie, especially yourself. After a couple minutes of trying, you give up and admit it: there might be some truth to the legends, enough truth that you’re really, really curious. As long as you’re here, you might as well take a look around for anything out of the ordinary.

As if your prayers have been answered, you come out in a small clearing, with what looks like an ancient temple carved into the side of the mountain. “Wow,” you breathe aloud, unable to help yourself. This will be the perfect spot to dance in, not to mention investigate.

First things first. Your socks and beat-up sneakers are off in a twinkling, replaced just as quickly with stockings and your trusty ballet shoes. Your dance bag is tossed unceremoniously on the ground off to one side. You dash to the edge of the clearing, take a moment to draw yourself up tall into the starting position, a modified fourth, then start the routine.

It’s hard work. There are lots of leaps and twirls, but no amount of leaps and twirls are any match for you. Like a bird, like a splendiferous butterfly in a tutu, you sail across the clearing again and again, humming the tune to yourself until your breath comes hard and fast and you have to stop. Occasionally you must suit the routine to the space, shorten your steps to avoid crashing into a tree or suchlike, but there is marvelously little of that. 

And if your final pass across the clearing takes you straight into the temple? That’s just an opportunity to explore.

Or to make a mistake. To bely your own gracefulness with a clumsy stumble over a vine in the dark. To land, not on the ground, but in thin air. To clutch desperately at the grass, hoping against hope that it will break your fall, but then feel it slip through your fingers- too little, much too late.

\---

The other kids have no idea what they’re talking about. Ever. When they tease you for watching anime, it’s because they think all anime is like _Sailor Moon_ or _Mew Mew Kissy Cutie_ , which it’s not. When they patronize you for writing fanfiction about said anime, saying stuff like “hey, we’re writers too,” it’s because they just got an A on a language arts assignment or decided to have a bad haiku contest once or something.

But if they have no idea what they’re talking about, why do the teasing and the patronizing still hurt so much?

Up until now, you’d prided yourself on your thick skin. You could weather anything, you told yourself. Anything they called you, you’d just calmly say “Takes one to know one” and go back to your work. Anything they threw at you you’d dodge, toss back to them if it was in reach and not too disgusting, and go on your way like nothing happened. But this is getting to be a little too much, okay? You were up late last night finishing a science project, and then they put a tack on Mrs. Janicki’s chair and planted the tack box in your bag to blame it on you, and then when you threw yourself into your writing at lunch to try and get the furious blush from the principal’s office visit out of your cheeks, they started teasing you. As usual.

Now it’s dismissal and they’re at it again. _Baby,_ they shout at you from the bus as you walk down the street to your apartment, a few blocks away. _Four-eyes. Scribbler. Teacher’s pet. Freak._

Enough. Enough. By the time you get home, you’re in tears, struggling to hold them back. The corridor smells of Mr. Yawkey’s cigars again even though the building super came over to yell at him for smoking last night, third time this month. In the apartment, Carrie’s talking on her cell phone, Emma’s practicing the violin, Angel is screaming in her crib, and Mom’s rattling potlids in the kitchen. Even climbing out your window onto the fire escape doesn’t help; usually there’s something about only a metal grille between you and empty air that calms you down, gives you just enough of an adrenaline rush to clear your head, but not today. 

And then you spot Mt. Ebott in the distance over the rooftops, like the back of some silent, sleeping beast, and get an idea.

You swing your backpack back onto your shoulders and dash out of the house, with a shout to Mom that you’re going over to study at Adrian’s. Instead of heading to Adrian’s, though, you head north, over the footbridge in the park and onto that one hiking trail no one ever uses, the one that goes up the mountain.

You’ll find a nice rock to sit on or something, do all your homework unbothered by anyone, write a little, and then go home. If Mom calls Adrian’s parents and finds out you aren’t there, you’ll be in huge trouble, but you’d rather not think about that. It might not happen. Mom trusts you. If it doesn’t, you might even be able to do this again.

That is, if some legendary monster doesn’t get you. You’d rather not think about that either.

You climb for a while. So far there’s nothing but trees and bushes, no nice rocks (or something). Just when your feet are starting to get tired and your inner kid is telling you this might not have been such a good idea, you come out in a clearing.

A clearing with a cave like some ancient temple, leading straight into the heart of the mountain.

Your curiosity gets the better of you in an instant. Whipping out your notebook, you begin to sketch the entrance, with its cracked old columns and the symbol over the door. Once that’s done, you cautiously walk inside the cave.

You’re not sure what you were expecting. You sure as heck weren’t expecting to fall sixty feet through the floor, though.

Maybe you should’ve just taken the teasing as it came.

\---

For a moment, you think it worked. You’re dead. You must be dead, or dying, because you can’t see anything and you can’t move, can’t breathe, because your nose and mouth are full of...flower petals?

So then you’re not dead, dammit. You still have a nose and mouth and lungs and eyes, and there probably aren’t vibrant golden-yellow flowers in the afterlife. There are flowers all around your little broken body, in at least a ten-foot radius, hundreds of them all thriving on the faint shaft of sunlight from the hole far, far above.

Automatically, clinically, you take stock of yourself. Head seems fine, no concussion or anything. Senses alright. The entire front of your body feels bruised, including a couple ribs, but there’s nothing sprained or broken that you can tell. No blood stains the flowers. They must’ve really helped to break your fall.

Your fall.

The reality of what just happened, _what you just did,_ slams into you with all the force of a speeding train. You could be dead right now. Never coming back, not to anything: not your awful parents, not your equally awful therapist, not the nightmares, not the constant, pervasive feeling of being unclean. Not the puzzle books stashed in your room. Not the fantasy stories. Not those rare silent moments when there’s no one but you and you can almost feel happy again. Not the flowers.

Do you really want to be dead? Free, forever, from this cruel, horrific, shocking, potentially wonderful world?

You’re confused, and starting to get scared. It’s not the good kind of scared, either, the kind that sends your heart racing and makes time seem to slow down so you notice everything. It’s the kind that makes your entire body feel like ice and your breathing go funny until you’re frozen, you can’t think straight, it’s all you can do to curl up in a ball with your hands over your head and hope the world doesn’t dissolve into _that night at the movie theater, when-_

_-I’m just gonna take a piss, now sit there and don’t move, do you hear me? Mom leaves, sitting waiting and he, with beef-jerky breath sitting next to you whistling Stars and Stripes Forever, his arm on the back of the bench hand resting on your shoulder easing dragging you closer until everything is dark, and streetlight orange, and beef-jerky breath and Stars and Stripes Forever and his other hand going where even Mom does not for you and you alone except he robs it, caresses it, his hand like some rotten thing and you scream break the hold tear your jacket trying to get away get free except can you ever be free again-_

No. No. This is why you jumped, to get away from this. What you really want is not to die, but to not be yourself anymore. That’s not an option, though, so death is the next best thing.

But...aren’t there monsters here? And don’t monsters mean magic, and doesn’t magic mean anything is possible?

Slowly, through the shaking in your arms and legs, you push yourself to your feet, with the help of a stick that you must have knocked into the pit as you fell. There’s a doorway flanked by two columns, just over there. It looks really old, and has the same symbol on it that the door up above did. You take a few steps toward it, then hesitate. Every stone could be a monster, and then you’d be dead and nothing would change.

 _Go on,_ says the tiniest of voices in your head. _What other choice do you have?_

You step through the door, into the darkness.


End file.
